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loginKind of mind blowing... but part of me thinks that this is just a bunch of money grabbing lawyers going "GIMMETHEMONEY" trying to show the companies they are worth their silly salaries. If it is a legitimate paten offence then take them to court, but a lot of these lawsuits are over really stupid patents that essentially are too broad in reach. For example :-
In 2003, Eolas won a historical $520 million (plus interest) court case, which established that it owns the patent on self-executing applets on a web page. Despite Microsoft appeals both to the US Patent Office and the Supreme Court the patent has been held to be valid. Now that Microsoft has run out of legal remedies it has no choice but to comply with judgment, and modify Internet Explorer 6 (IE 7.0 already has this built in). Sure there are script-based developer workarounds, but the whole Fargo of the thing is that it's pretty damned ugly.
Essentially what Eolas' patent says is, "No matter how you make it happen, if an applet (very broad definition) starts automatically on a web page, we own the patent on that, and you have to license the technology from us -- that is, IF we decide we like you."
Imagine if God patented a biological oxygen to fluid storage device that will run by using the oxygen as a fuel source.... that way everyone who is born in the world would owe God money as that is what lungs are... Use gobbledygook that is vague is like a fisherman trawling the seas for fish... In this case it is the companies that are trawling the technology fields for stuff they can steal (and yes, I think if you want to claim on a patent you should have a working example of the device you are patenting and not just hope someone in the future invents the thing so that you can steal from the company).
Source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/oct/04/microsoft-motorola-android-patent-lawsuit#
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